I started to sync BTG Core Wallet. I also extracted a receive address and put it in the .bat file to run the miner.exe. 3 GPUs are now mining for more than 2 days.
However, BTG Core Wallet stopped to sync due to not enough hard disk space. I restarted it and now the sync is complete.
BUT the receive address (that I use to mine to) is not in the wallet anymore. And I can’t add it either. How do I add my private key anyway?
Is all my mining effort lost? I have around 14000 unconfirmed shared on pool.gold.
Hi there! You have not lost anything. All we need to do is figure out how to get you synced with the blockchain.
If you kept mining, the mining pool would have sent you (if any blocks were found) your coins to your address. If you have your key, you can access them anywhere anytime.
You wrote you use BTG Core wallet. You can easily import new keys into the wallet (and not having to touch the wallet.dat file). Here is what you need to do:
Run BTG-Core
Select Help (to the right of Settings)
Select Debug Window
Select Console
If you encrypted your wallet, unlock it by entering: walletpassphrase “YourLongPassphrase” 600
After that type: importprivkey <your_btg_private_key_for_address_you_want_to_add> (Note that the private key must not have spaces)
I used the console and entered walletpassphrase and so on which returned a null. I assume that’s fine.
Now here is my confusion. I don’t have a private key. Is that maybe because BTG Core wallet crashed on me? Or maybe because I have encrypted my wallet after getting the sending address?
I found a command called dumprivkey and I tried it with the receiving address which I used for the last few days.
But it returns an error:
Private key for address xxx is not known (code -4)
You say you “extracted a receive address.” Did you create this address with the BTG Core Wallet, or some other way?
Syncing the wallet and creating an address pair are two separate things.
Creating an address pair generates a public key (wallet address) and private key together; if you have a wallet address, it was created with a private key. If you created it with the Bitcoin Gold Core Wallet, it will have been stored in the wallet.dat file, which may be password-protected (if you opted for password protection.) This is true regardless of sync status or failure. The wallet software does not present you with the private key unless you explicitly try to pull it out, but it makes the public wallet address fairly easy to see.
As a separate matter, the wallet software will also sync with the public blockchain. This allows the wallet software to be aware of the current balance of addresses on the chain; without this, the wallet software can’t know how much is in your wallet address. If your sync fails or is restarted, the software doesn’t know what your current balance is, but that does not affect which address and keys the software has stored.
I created that address with Bitcoin Gold Core Wallet.
Your explanation made things a lot clearer. So the private key has to be pulled out via console.
But since I have created the address in Core Wallet shouldn’t I be able to pull it and not get that error message:
Private key for address xxx is not known (code -4)
I stopped mining for now until I know how to get my 17000 unconfirmed shares back. Or if they are lost.
Hey nue2lax, i think i know why you get confused. I will clear out the things for you now.
If you created the address using the BTG core software, wallet.dat should have had this key stored. Unless:
a) It crashed and got corrupted.
b) you coppied over old or new wallet.dat file, which didn’t had that key stored since it is an entirely new wallet database.
You may think about which one may be true for you.
You keep saying “my 17000 unconfirmed shares”, “my shares” etc. This leads me to believe that you are not entirely sure how everything works. So let me explain real fast:
Share is something that your GPU is rewarded with when it calculates given math problem and finds the solution (math problem is presented by your mining pool software). Your GPU’s get those shares every time they successfuly find math solution to the math problems send by the pool. By sending such math problems to it’s miners, a pool can arrive at solution (only one) that has a specific length and value. This solution can be calculated by the GPU of any of the pool’s miners. Once the pool confirms that it is the first one to present the solution to the network, it gets rewarded with the block reward value. This BTG Amount get’s sent to the pool and it is the pool’s job to distribute these coins fairly to it’s miners. Here is where your shares come into play. Pool calulcalates all shares sent by all it’s miners during the time that it took to find that block, and it calculates what percentage of the reward will be sent to the address you gave to your pool as receiving address.
Sometimes a pool takes several minutes to find a block (when many many miners do calculations for that pool) or several weeks (when there aren’t many miners on that pool). So your shares may be much or may be nothing at all in terms of coin value.
So many things need to happen before your pool actually sends you coins. And you won’t see your address in any block explorer if there are no coins ever sent to this address.
@Zhivko is right - it’s not “shares” you’re looking for, it’s Paid Balance.
If you go to the Pool.Gold dashboard and enter your public wallet address, and the Paid Balance will reflect whatever has been paid to your address - that should match the amount you see in any BTG explorer (or any wallet software configured with your addresses.)
Thank you so much for elaborating. I think due to the abortion during sync, it created a new wallet.dat file which doesn’t have to private key of my initial receiving address anymore. I wasn’t aware how the software works back then, but it’s know a bit clearer.
I figured that my shares are not yet translated into BTG because on pool.gold the last time they mined a block was on May 1st at 4pm. Which is a few hours earlier than when I started to mine with the receiving address that has no private key.
I’m aware of the pool.gold dashboard and that I can enter the wallet address.
Let’s assume these 17000 shares will return an x amount of BTG. How can I get them? Do I have to do what is called “claim”? And can I do that without the private key?
No, your share of the reward will be sent directly to your wallet address after 100 confirmations. No “claiming” or private key is needed to receive it. However, after it is delivered to that address, you’ll need that private key in order to do anything with it, or it will just be stuck in that wallet address!
I am sorry to tell you, if you lost your private key, any coins sent to the address associated with it are lost. Nobody can recover them since they can only do this with the lost key.
Do not feel bad, many people in their earlier steps as miners did much bigger mistakes and lost much bigger amount of coins. This is how we learn, unfortunately.
Search your computer for other copies of wallet.dat - you can shut down the wallet software, swap out the file, and start it back up - it will read whatever wallet.dat is in place. (Make sure to back up all the wallet.dat files you find!)
